Monday, September 11, 2006

They are blaming the victim!

With every anniversary of the September attacks the Arab media reserve wide space to cover the commemoration of the terror attack with visible assertion from the media that what happened in 9/11 was a terror attack and no channel or paper would use a different description. Sounds good so far?

I find myself compelled to follow the responses from Arab media and commentators in the hope that I could find a change, a review of calculations or a rereading of facts that is different from the previous. But the media is keen to disappoint me every single time because after the short friendly introduction that leads into the main coverage of the terror attack I find a flood of blaming, condemnation, chastising and scorn directed against (guess who?)…the victim of course, the victim of that very terror attack!It makes me feel there's only a fine line of shyness stopping those people from praying for the souls of the terrorists, after all they, in the mentality of the media, are also victims of America (who in turn is the victim of that same terror attack!).

As I write the first few lines of this post Omar directs me to an AFP story about the media and 9/11 which left me in shock; the nonsense spread from Arabs to Americans themselves that some in the American MSM are firing their criticism arrows at the victim, turning logic upside down in an offensive and insulting manner explaining that by saying they are searching for solutions to the problem or to avoid another 9/11. many go as far as criticizing and condemning the American administration that had only been in office for six months when America cam under the attack that'd been in planning for years which means the terrorists had no clue what that administration's policy would be like and didn't even know who was going to be in office when they started planning the attack.

You also see others who criticize the American response to the attack calling it "savage" or "brutal" which are words commonly used by the Arab media that at the same time ignores the savage brutality of the attack in the first place.

Concentrating on the response and ignoring the attack that provoked it is an act of denial and running away from reality, and concentrating on the "erroneous" American policy is something I cannot accept because it comes either from dictatorships that see a threat for them in the American policy that calls for liberty and democracy, or from fascist religious powers that see in the pluralism and tolerance that America calls for a danger to their dominance on the minds of their people, or from some American politicians blinded by ambition and care only about discrediting their opponents.

Like we said in a previous post, did Moscow's pro-Arab, pro-Islamist policy keep the Russian people safe from the hands of radical terrorists who use their extreme interpretation of religion as a cover for violence?NO…

Now let's ask ourselves some clear questions and let's go with those critics and suppose we changed the western policy toward "central and vital" Arab and Muslim causes, the question is, will that be enough to make dictators and extremists believe in peace with the west?

I don't think so. Those dictators and extremists always seek to keep a state of low-level confrontation and to keep the possibility for war open because their dominance over their people depends on their ability to create enemies and convince their people that those enemies are whom hatred and anger must be directed at.

I'll try to clarify more and dig up the main reason for the conflict which, I believe, is the thousand year-old interpretations of Quran which were made (the interpretations) divine and holy by despotic rulers and clerics who used these interpretations of the Quran to prohibit rational thinking and obstruct the natural course of mental and cultural evolution of the society asserting that the solution is in returning to the Salaf (ancestors and their doctrine) and not in going forward, these are the kinds of interpretations that shaped the visions of the terrorists who carried out the attack and other attacks.

These interpretations state clearly without any chance for confusion what the attitude toward non-Muslims must be; either convert them to Islam, or force them to pay the Jizya (tax/tribute) or it is war and of course the idea of peaceful coexistence and mutual respect based on equality does not exist, neither do peace treaties. What exists instead is Hudna (temporary cease-fire) which ends once enough power to fight and/or eliminate the enemy is gained.

Now I wonder, if the west chose to change its policy would this encourage the interdependent clerics and dictators to change those interpretations or cancel them along with the set of beliefs derived from them?

Again I don't think so and this what makes the confrontation inevitable. Inevitable because they want it and not the "other" and no matter how the west tries to avoid it, it (war) will come to the west.

The war in fact is one between the set of ideas that seeks to pull the word back into the dark ages and the set of ideas that seek freedom of mind and wants to move human civilization forward.Changing policies will not change the "holy" heritage which our enemies want to impose, first on us in this region to later export it and impose it on the west.

This is our war first, it's our war as citizens of this region to preserve our humanity so as not to turn into violent, death-spreading mutants.It's the war of those of us who believe in rewriting history and breaking away from its chains and it's the war of those who look forward to liberating their minds from the dominance of totalitarian interpretations of religion, and it's your war too.

Your duty is to help save us from being smashed between the hammer of dictators and the anvil of religion so that we can take our natural place and play a positive role in this life.And it's also your battle to stop the murderers from acquiring deadly power so that we can be sure what happened in 9/11, or something much worse, does not happen again.